Perils of Internet voting Letter of the day

Hey there, time traveller!This article was published 11/11/2010 (2219 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Your Nov. 9 editorial Modern times, ancient system recommends Internet voting as a means of increasing voter turnout. As a computer engineer who teaches web programming courses, I would urge you to reconsider this stance.

Internet voting would be much less secure than our current system and would mean the loss of a physical record of votes for auditing purposes. We would also lose the ability to verify that each vote was cast by a unique voter. For example, a parent might be tempted to ask their 18-year-old children if they could vote on their behalf, or vice versa.

Recently, election officials in Washington, D.C., invited security experts to test an Internet voting system designed for overseas voters. Within 36 hours, a team of computer scientists from the University of Michigan had compromised the system, allowing them to read and change recorded votes.

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